


I Don't Need a Man

by idyll



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-03
Updated: 2007-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:30:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vala can't reconcile what she hears from Teal'c.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Need a Man

Eventually Teal'c tells them everything, in broad strokes of a brush, the colors bold and obvious and predictable. Vala doesn't think she's the only one he pulls aside for a personal session wherein he switches to a more precise brush and wields it with subtlety and depth.

She drives to Daniel's place and sits outside in the car for ten minutes before she calls him.

"I can stand on my own," she snaps when Daniel answers his phone.

"Vala?" Daniel asks, absent and dazed in that way that's charmed half the SGC.

But not Vala, oh, no. "I can break on my own, too," she informs him

"Um--"

"I am a chalice, Daniel. A _chalice_!"

There's a long pause, then Daniel says, "That's, uh...great. Vala. What's going on? Are you okay?"

"I was, Daniel, but then you were a bloody bastard and I apparently thought that was just fine!" Vala shouts and hangs up on him, and that's not even what she meant to say, but there you have it.

*

Vala goes to Miami mostly because she watched _2 Fast 2 Furious_ with Sergeant Dash the week before, but she ends up loving it. After four months there her wardrobe consists of twenty-two pairs of short-shorts, forty-seven bikini tops, and thirty-three pairs of sandals. She also has a few sarongs for those days when she's feeling whimsical.

She procures for herself a zippy little convertible and spends her days on various beaches, her nights in various clubs, and she buys a house on the ocean that has a view that goes on for as much of forever as the people around her can conceive.

If it seems as though she's doing nothing important, then at least she's doing it on her own, and that's something she clings to with both hands.

And all of her teeth.

*

A year after leaving Colorado she's dancing at a club on the beach, and a sure hand on her waist intercepts a spin she's in the midst of.

"Cameron," she exclaims when she realizes who it is. She beams up at him. "I didn't know you could dance, you sexy beast!"

"Well, gosh," Cam drawls, disarmingly wide-eyed in his sarcasm, "and here I thought you knew everything about me."

He rolls his eyes and Vala steps closer and winds an arm across the small of his back. "So," she purrs. "What's brought you to Miami?"

Cam turns them into a multi-tiered spin, then leads Vala into a complicated dip. "You," he says, bending over her until they're nose-to-nose. "Come back."

She laughs and pushes up, forcing them back into starting position. "Really, Cameron, you're not nearly as charming as you used to be. It's like you're not even trying."

The song changes into something faster and sultrier, and Vala's hair hangs to her waist nowadays, trapping a full day's worth of humidity at her neck by this time of night, so she pulls back to lift it from her neck and decides to seek a different partner while she's at it.

"I don't think so," Cam says and presses himself against her back. "We're not done here."

Vala remembers him at his homestead, with that blonde woman who wasn't at all sarcastic when she was wide-eyed, and she remembers Teal'c's description of her breaking to pieces in the circle of Daniel's arms during a lifetime that never was.

"Go home, Cameron," she says sharply and pulls away, walks away.

*

He's waiting for her when she steps out of her house the next day. She huffs loudly and drops down onto one of the steps leading to the beach. "Was I unclear, somehow?" she snaps.

"Teal'c sent a message," Cam says and sits next to her.

Vala has lived for so many years, seen a multitude of planets, and encountered more people than she can count, but it's this time, this planet, these people, who make her feel old.

"I can't imagine what it might be," she sighs and adjusts her sarong.

"He said to tell you that I ran, Daniel studied, Landry grew plants, Sam played the cello, and he meditated. He said that we all reached that place of pure peace and tranquility that carried us to the end of our days."

Vala stares at him, her jaw gaping. "How _fabulous_ for all of you," she grinds out pleasantly. "Now, if you could just--"

"I'm not done," Cam says easily and nudges her knee with his own. "He said to tell you that during that time you simply _were_."

A while ago, Vala wouldn't have understood what Teal'c's words meant. More recently, she would have pretended not to. But here and now all she can do is lean forward and hide her face in her own lap.

Cam knocks his knee into hers again. "I miss you."

Vala lifts her head and studies his smirking face. She remembers more about that reunion of his than she'll ever admit, and maybe that's why Teal'c didn't understand what he was doing when he told her about those years that never happened.

"I can stand on my own," she insists.

Cam lifts a brow. "Oddly enough? That's not something I ever doubted."

"And I can break on my own, too," she continues.

"But why would you want to?" he counters, and then he wraps an arm across her shoulders and draws her in.

"I won't stand by and let you spew all manner of nastiness at me and then take you into my heart gratefully," she goes on, her voice hot, and Cam presses his face to her hair and says, "I'm not Daniel. Vala, I'm not Daniel."

"Teal'c told you?"

Cam shakes his head. "No. I guessed." His fingers press into the skin around the ball of her shoulder. "Come home," he says into her hair. "Stand on your own there, and maybe hold me up a little." He laughs. "I've had some trouble with my legs in the past."

"_Cameron_," she says, in a manner she suspects that a version of her--who never really existed--said _Daniel_. "I don't mind honesty, but I won't abide cruelty, you need to know that."

"I always have."

Vala pauses, then says, "Okay, so maybe you're actually _more_ charming than you used to be." She bounces to her feet and holds her hand out, fingers wriggling demandingly. "Let's go."

.End


End file.
